Shinra Employees
by Silk Weaver
Summary: A glimpse into the lives of the Turks. Unconnected ideas that might turn into stories.


Author's Note: These are all really short, I know. I'm sorry. But I got bitten by inspiration and it wouldn't leave me alone. In the meantime, enjoy this!

* * *

**Shinra Employees**

The Turks

When Tseng is tired of his job, he does origami. It's nice to create little marvels out of scraps f paper. To make something beautiful and elegant. He tries to ignore that he's made almost 1,000 paper cranes at this point.

Rude counts. It doesn't matter what, he just starts numbering things. It's gotten to the point where no one except Reno can stand Rude during a stakeout, and that's just because the redhead talks over it.

Reno goes dancing when he's upset. It doesn't matter what kind, since he's learned everything from ballroom to breakdancing. He just needs to get out and do something so purely physical that his brain turns off and he doesn't think about anything.

Elena is bad at coping. She tends to bottle things up, because she doesn't want the other Turks to think her weak. Everything just builds up inside her until she can't take it any more and breaks down crying. The other Turks do their best to comfort her, even though none of them are quite sure how to.

After AVALANCHE defeated Sephiroth and stopped Meteor, they all took a break from looking after Rufus for one night. The young president was under the impression that they were going drinking. Instead, they climbed up the ruins of Shinra Tower and stargazed, making up constellations and privately reassuring themselves that the danger was really gone.

Rude and Reno are the only two who ever wear the sunglasses that are an optional part of the Turk uniform. When Elena puts them on she looks even less intimidating than she does normally, and Tseng is tired of Reno's reaction when he gives their resident loose cannon a _look_ over the shades.

Some days, when Rufus has been nasty or a job has gone wrong or it's just generally been a bad day, Reno wants to get them all a pet dog.

All of the Turks are glad that they have each other as family, especially when Rude has another argument with his parents, or Tseng starts telling stories about his cousins in Wutai.

Sometimes Elena feels that she'll be single for the rest of her life- all of the boyfriends she's ever had have never been good enough for her three "big brothers."

None of them were quite sure how they all ended up poisoned at the same time, yet by different poisons. They're even less certain of how they ended up in the care of Tifa Lockhart during the week it took them to recover. But now Marlene and Denzel aren't afraid of them any more and every third Saturday they're invited to Seventh Heaven for dinner.

They all mourned Aerith's death. It was a source of guilt for all of them that such an innocent girl died while people like them- liars, thieves, murderers- lived on.

Reno claims that the really good Turks can't die. He uses Tseng and Vincent Valentine as his examples. They both should be dead many times over, yet they're still around to tell him to stop getting such stupid ideas.

Elena is the most organized of the Turks. Most people thing Tseng's desk would be the neatest, but he spends too much time at it for the space to ever be completely clean. Elena, on the other hand, never leaves anything out of place. She likes having things looking good, to the point where sometimes she just can't be around Reno.

There is always an order to how they get sick, when a bug gets passed around the office. Reno always starts it, with what seems like a small cold, or something equally harmless. Tseng is hit hard because he grew up in Wutai and doesn't have natural immunity to the Midgar sicknesses. When Elena gets it, she's always out for exactly a day and a half, and then Rude has to do desk work for about eight days. Then the president gets it, and they all suffer.

No one mentioned anything when Rude started to babysit for Tifa and Cloud. But Tseng stopped sending them on so many night missions, Reno ended up going to Seventh Heaven for drinks, and Elena didn't bother with pretenses and just followed him there.


End file.
